He tried to picture his father swaying beside him, against the rhythm of the train, but imagined instead the old boy saying, ‘You’re the support act, son, not the headliner.’ Though phrases like ‘support act’ and ‘headliner’ had never been a part of Big Magnus’s vocabulary.
Was it a bad sign that the only people he wanted to invite to his gig were dead? Probably just a sign that he was kidding himself. Magnus would not have invited them had they been alive. His wee mammy would have jumped on a plane to London at the hint of a gig; the same went for his sister Rhona, her man Davie and a whole swathe of aunties, uncles and cousins eager for a spattering of stardust.
‘No little lady you want to show off to?’ Richie Banks had asked, looking up for a moment from the contracts splayed across his desk. ‘Seeing a man on stage can do things to a girl, if you know what I mean.’
‘No one at the moment,’ Magnus had said, looking at the view of brick wall through the dim glass of Richie’s office window and wondering how his agent could have stood to spend the best part of thirty years there. ‘Come along if you want.’
‘It don’t have the same effect on me, son.’ Rich had laughed. ‘Anyway, sad to say, I’m already booked,’ and he had mentioned another of his stable who was a regular on television panel shows. ‘Gets the jitters before he goes on TV. Needs me to hold his hand.’ Rich had pushed the contract for six nights’ warm-up at the O2 across the desk to Magnus and pointed to where he should sign. ‘This is a big gig for you, a good opportunity, don’t fuck it up.’
‘Why would I fuck it up?’
Rich slid the signed contract into an envelope. His grin was still in place, but he had raised his eyebrows, punting the question, which was no question at all, back to Magnus.
O2 was the next stop. The man in the seat beside Magnus was reading an Evening Standard he had folded into a pocket-sized square. Magnus glanced over the man’s shoulder at the headline: ‘Mystery Virus Wipes Out Cruise Ship’. A photograph of an impressive-looking liner illustrated the article about the latest outbreak of the sweats. He scanned the text. There had been cases of the virus in London, but nothing on that scale. The article listed instructions on how to act. People should observe hygiene precautions, phone NHS Direct if they felt unwell, avoid close contact with strangers. Magnus looked at the crammed carriage and grinned. London had not closed for the Blitz, the IRA, or al-Qaeda. It would take more than a few germs to shut down the city.
The train slowed. The man beside him coughed and then sneezed. He wiped his nose on a tissue and stuffed his newspaper into his jacket pocket. One of the Dongolites pulled out a spotty handkerchief and mopped his forehead. The boy was red-faced and shiny with perspiration; gleaming like a… like a… Magnus cast around for an image he could use on Dongolite hecklers, but nothing useful… pig, conker, bell-end… came to mind.
Magnus followed the flow of people on to the platform. There was work being done in the station. Some of the barriers that flanked the platform’s edge had been taken down and temporarily replaced by traffic cones strung with fluorescent tape. They narrowed the walkway, pushing people even closer together.
Magnus saw the crowd before and behind him and realised that the rest of the train had been as full as his compartment. There were other trains, one every fifteen minutes, all crammed with people. Most of them were heading to the stadium. Magnus swallowed. It would be all right once he was on stage. For now he was just a part of the crowd, everyone moving at the same slow pace towards the exit, like one body composed of many cells.
The four Dongolites from his carriage paused up ahead. Magnus glanced in their direction as he drew level. The sweat-soaked youth was swaying gently on his heels, with the unfocused stare of someone about to be transported on a wash of acid. He was wearing black-rimmed spectacles, round and ridiculous, that made him look as if he had put his eyes to binoculars some Beano-reading wag had grimed with soot. The glass magnified the youth’s eyeballs and Magnus saw them roll back in his head, pupils spooling upward until all that was left was white, greased and boiled-egg shiny. The Dongolite tottered backward. The heels of his spit-polished brogues knocked a traffic cone from the platform’s edge. He swayed gently, took a step towards his friends, and then teetered backward again.
Magnus gave a shout of warning and moved towards the group. He heard the shrill blast of the guard’s whistle, saw the Dongolite’s knees crumple, his specs falling, smash against the concrete as he tipped off the platform, backward on to the tracks.
Christ! One of the Dongolites tore off his jacket, exposing maroon braces and matching sleeve suspenders. He froze. Christ! Jesus Christ! Christ! Jesus!
The other two Dongolites threw themselves on to the ground, ready to pull their friend up from the tracks below, but too slow, too slow. Magnus was with them now, face flat on the platform as if a bomb had gone off. He caught a quick glimpse of the boy’s body, floppy hair corn-gold against the gravel, unseasonable tweeds rag-doll-rumpled and then the train was flashing past, the shouts of the crowd and the frantic scream of the guard’s whistle not quite drowned out by its sound.
Richie Banks had once told him that ‘Good comics have ice in their soul. I’ve known more than one cold cunt go up on stage and do their full routine, same day that their mother died. Unfeeling bastards, but a joy to represent. They don’t let a crisis get in the way of a gig.’
It was like speaking to God, standing at the edge of the stage, facing the flare of lights that razed all view of the audience. Magnus did not mention the Dongolite’s fall, the corn-gold hair shining bright in the dark, the rush of the train, or the shout of the youth frozen on the platform, Christ! Christ! Oh Jesus Christ! But the sound of the accident was in his head, the scent of blood and burning rubber still in his nostrils. When he took his bow and announced, ‘Here’s the man you’ve all been waiting for, Jooooooooooohnny Dongo!’ the applause of the audience brought back the shouts of the people on the platform and Magnus could have sworn he heard the guard’s whistle screaming on, so high his eardrums felt ready to explode.
Two
Johnny Dongo looked a mess. His hair had lost its comic bounce and hung in a lank cowlick over a forehead sheened with sweat. He spat into his handkerchief, raised a glass of milk cut with rum to his lips and said, ‘What a fuckup.’
Magnus could not think of anything to say and so he kept quiet. He was on his fifth beer, one half of him still high on applause, the other still reeling from the shock of the accident.
‘A fuckup,’ Johnny repeated. ‘A fucking fuckup.’
It had been a great gig, a show to be proud of, but nobody contradicted Johnny. Magnus took a swig from his bottle of Peroni and looked at his feet. There were six of them in Johnny Dongo’s hotel room: Johnny’s manager Kruze, a couple of Dongolites Magnus had not been introduced to and Johnny’s girlfriend Kim, her face stern beneath her blonde beehive, but with a hint of a smirk that put Magnus in mind of Myra Hindley’s mugshot. They were sitting on a trio of couches around a black coffee table that looked like it had been designed for snorting coke. The Dongolites were side by side, legs crossed in opposite directions as if to indicate that, despite appearances, they did not trust each other. Johnny was squeezed between his manager and his girlfriend in a too-tight arrangement that hinted at a power struggle. Magnus had the third couch to himself.